
DATE: Friday, March 28, 1997                TAG: 9703260188

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRRENTS    PAGE: 08   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIC FEBER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  102 lines

PORTSMOUTH NATIVE A RISING STAR IN THE BLUES DEEP CREEK RESIDENT DEBORAH COLEMAN, 39, IS MAKING HER MARK NATIONALLY.

When Deep Creek resident Deborah Coleman returns home from one of her many business trips, she doesn't tell her 15-year-old daughter, Misao, or her parents, Eddie and Marjorie Coleman, about successful networking.

Rather, if things went well, she'll talk about rocking the house, if the band was tight, if her licks were right-on, or if the audience demanded an encore.

Coleman, 39, isn't like most working moms. Her ``business suit'' is a stylish top and jeans; her ``briefcase'' holds an electric guitar.

Coleman now makes her living as a rising star on the growing blues music scene. She's an expert guitarist, a songwriter and vocalist who barnstorms around the country fronting her backing band, the Thrillseekers.

She just released ``I Can't Lose,'' her national recording debut on the prestigious San Francisco-based blues label, Blind Pig Records, and in 1993 she made a national name for herself when she entered and won the Charleston Blues Festival's National Amateur Talent Search.

How good are Coleman's ``business meetings''? The artistic director of the South Carolina blues fest said ``Coleman ruled, delivering a bone-rattling set to a capacity audience that almost shut down the contest with their demand that she perform repeated encores.''

Coleman said she's thrilled to finally be doing what she's always wanted to do with her life, thrilled that she can now devote full time to playing the blues in front of appreciative audiences.

``Right now the career is going the way I want,'' she said from her hotel room in Santa Cruz during a tour stop. ``Reviews for the album have been very, very positive, and I understand that several of the songs are being played on the radio. I can't complain.''

Currently, she and her Thrillseekers are on a West Coast tour, having played dates in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Sacramento. She said she's already played at such hallowed blues havens as Buddy Guy's club in Chicago and B.B. King's Club in both Memphis and Los Angeles. A European tour is in the planning stages and she's now getting booked into the many blues festivals that sprout across the country during the summer.

An East Coast swing will bring Coleman back home to Hampton Roads for an early April gig in Williamsburg. Before that, she'll take time to go home to the Camelot section of Chesapeake to enjoy the company of Misao, her folks, friends and neighbors.

``I miss my daughter,'' she said. ``When I'm on the road I call her up every other day to see how things are going and to make sure she's doing her homework and she's minding my parents. I'm looking forward to spending some time at home.''

Coleman was born and raised in Portsmouth. She attended Wilson High School and graduated from Deep Creek High in 1975.

Her affinity for music came by way of her parents - her father played piano, two brothers played guitar, and a sister played guitar and keyboards.

Influenced by the radio, Coleman said that, as a youngster, she loved listening to the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelinand Grand Funk Railroad.

``I grew up listening to rock and roll,'' she said. ``I remember the first concert I ever attended was Joe Cocker at Scope.''

When she found out that the bedrock for all of these bands was the blues, she became a believer and never looked back.

``When I first picked up the guitar I began to play blues licks because if you can play the blues, then you can play anything,'' she said. ``Then I started listening to B.B. King, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, and I went to every blues concert I could.''

Locally, she played in a 13-piece R&B band called Ninth Max.

She took time off to become an electrician, get married and give birth to her daughter Misao - who now attends mom's old alma mater, Deep Creek High - and attend nursing school. But the siren song of the blues became too strong.

``I raised my family and then finally decided to play music and quit everything,'' she said. ``I was bound and determined to play.''

She then spent five years with an all-female rock band Moxie (one of their early jobs was opening for Emerson, Lake and Palmer at the Hampton Coliseum) and playing a year and a half in an R&B/Top 40 band, Misbehavin'.

Influenced by such guitarists as Larry Carlton, Steve Cropper, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins, she began to absorb the blues.

She then entered and won that South Carolina competition, earned free studio time, recorded a demo tape and signed a record deal with the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based New Moon Records, which released a 1994 regional recording, ``Takin' a Stand.'' That caught the ears of the folks at Blind Pig.

Now Coleman, as an African-American woman playing the blues, faces the challenge night after night of proving herself in a musical genre dominated by men.

``I love the challenge of proving to an audience not familiar with my music that I can do it,'' she said. ``But it takes just one song and at the end of that first song, they're with me hooping and hollering.''

And after she burns the stage with her incisive guitar licks and the audience screams for more, it's just another successful business trip for Deborah Coleman. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JIM PURDIM

Deborah Coleman's just-released ``I Can't Lose'' marked her national

recording debut.

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

Who: Deborah Coleman and the Thrillseekers

What: Rocking blues and funk.

Where: J.M. Randall's, 4854 Longhill Road, Williamsburg (corner

of Longhill Road and Old Town Road).

When: 9:30 p.m., April 4. Get there early for good seats.

Tickets: No cover charge, but reservations are recommended.

Call: For more information, call the club at 259-0406.